Marsh
By John Grey

 

The marsh works as advertised,
buffers the stormy ocean,
absorbs the violence
so, people won't have to.
It's docile now,
lush ooze and gliding ducks,
murky water and brackish smell.
It's like a featherweight boxer
who, when roused,
can take down the heaviest of the heavies.
Someone drowned here once.
I believe it was a hurricane.

 

Looking In on the Abandoned Factory

The garment factory
is silent as
its neighboring stream.
Inside the building's
glass-strewn floor,
half the size
of a football field,
I smell the last
of eighty-hour-a-week odor
of flesh worked free
from bone.
This place whirred
like a generation's motor.
Now, it can barely
keep up with the stillness.

 

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John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in New World Writing, City Brink and Tenth Muse. Latest books, “Subject Matters”,” Between Two Fires” and “Covert” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in Paterson Literary Review, Amazing Stories and Cantos.